Nearly ten years ago I came to a realization about the purpose of my life. After the first two decades of my life trying to define myself and my worth by my achievements, I realized that such a way of life was no longer possible, or at least no longer gratifying, as a wife and mother. In my (then) new roles, the accomplishments are harder to see, clouded by entropy, agency of others, and the ethereal. After much thought, study and prayer, I realized that charity needed to be my goal until the end of my days.
I'll probably end up spending the rest of my days trying to figure out exactly what living with charity means, but today I found in this beautiful talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland,
Remember Lot's Wife, some more inklings of what my purpose ought to be. In his classic, frank style, he calls us on the carpet on our New Year's Resolutions (we made five and have already broken four, he says!), but defines our correct path for this year and every year as forward facing, not backward facing:
So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind.
Here's what he says about faith, hope and charity:
Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up...
...when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebashing someone with their earlier mistakes—and that “someone” might be ourselves. We can be so hard on ourselves, often much more so than with others!
...
You can remember just enough to avoid repeating the mistake, but then put the rest of it all on the dung heap Paul spoke of to those Philippians. Dismiss the destructive and keep dismissing it until the beauty of the Atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future and the bright future of your family and your friends and your neighbors. God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. That is the thing Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did Laman and Lemuel and a host of others in the scriptures.
Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 8:6; 9:11).
And there, my friends, are the quotes of the day for me. I'm going to go clean out my guest room closets now!
